How weight loss jabs are hitting the UK’s humble spud growers

Weight-loss jabs and a focus on healthy living are killing off demand for potatoes and damaging fish and chip shop trade.

Farmers around the UK say they are facing having to ditch thousands of stored potatoes due to declining sales of the spud.

Farm owner Andy Goodacre has been left with a ‘potato mountain’ he can’t sell after seeing demand from supermarkets and chip suppliers slump in recent years.

He believes the surging use of weight loss jabs such as Mounjaro and Ozempic, and trendier, healthier alternatives are to blame.

Chippy customers are also opting for smaller portion sizes and sharing bags of chips, meaning health-minded Brits are also impacting the trade of fish and chips.

Andy, from Grantham, Lincolnshire, says over £120,000 worth of his finest potatoes – roughly 600 tonnes – are at risk of being dumped after key buyers, McCain’s, failed to place orders.

The dad-of-two, who has been supplying the chip giant for 40 years, says shoppers wanted fewer crisps and chips, instead opting for healthier lentil options.

Andy, 65, said: ‘For 40 years I’ve grown potatoes for McCain chips and Seabrooks, but their contract got a bit tighter.

‘This year we didn’t sign any contract, and now we can’t get any orders. We’ve been left with a potato mountain we can’t shift. I’ve never known a season like it. I think there are a lot of factors.

‘There’s a carryover from last year which depresses the market from the start. Then there’s the jabs, where people are eating less and not going to the chip shops as much.’

Andy said he’s spoken to fish and chip shop owners and found many are opting to buy a fish and one bag each to share, rather than getting their own.

‘The fat jab is stopping people’s appetite, they are eating less. There are tens of thousands of people on them,’ he said.

‘I’m in a small village, and I know loads of people on them, so it definitely has an effect. There’s less demand now because of them. It doesn’t seem as though people want to eat as they used to.’

Andy says his top five varieties are currently in storage, but it’ll be a race against the clock to shift them before they spoil by early April.

He added: ‘In a normal year, that would be worth £200 a tonne, so roughly £120,000. In higher years, it could be worth £300 a tonne, so even more.

‘They’ve been in store since October, and they can usually stay there for six months, so we haven’t got very long at all. I would prefer to send them to a foodbank, if anybody is willing to come and collect them. If not, there’s a risk they’ll be fed to cattle.’

Andrew Crook, 50, who is the president of the National Federation of Fish Friers, revealed the trends were impacting chip shops too.

Andrew said: ‘There’s definitely a cost-of-living thing with businesses watching their portion size, which can be a huge volume of potatoes lost nationally.

‘But then there’s definitely a fat jab factor to it. Many people I speak to are on a fat jab, and I see a lot of my customers have lost weight. There’s definitely factors where people are going to lose use these jabs, lose weight and then eat less.’

Andrew said if farmers don’t make money on potatoes this year, the 2027 crop might not be enough and lead farmers to plant other crops instead.

‘Some of these farmers have a lot of these sitting in the shed. Anything by June or July is valueless and can be quite a chunk of their earnings,’ he added.

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